drawing//digital//data

In the context of contemporary fine art, the chapter discusses the translation (the finding of equivalences) of a phenomenological experience of water during the activity of swimming repetitive strokes in a swimming pool into drawing with both traditional drawing media and a tablet computer – an Apple iPad. Firstly, through the identification of various physical and psychological elements that appear to consciousness whilst swimming repetitive strokes, the chapter furthers understanding and gives insights into human interaction and relationship with water during this specific activity. Secondly, the research uses the data collected from personal experience of this activity in order to explore and discuss the premise that drawing is phenomenology, considering whether this premise is compromised when drawing with an Apple iPad rather than traditional drawing media. The text considers the phenomenological approach to the research through an engagement with both philosophy (including Merleau-Ponty 1964, 2002, 2004) and theoretical research (including Rosand 2002), to underpin and generate understanding of experiences of water during the activity of swimming and the process of translation of those experiences into drawing.

On the Designing and Prototyping of Kinetic Objects

MSOrgm (Huang, 2009), SSOrgan, and LBSkeleton (Huang, 2011) were created to contain computation, aesthetic, and structural characteristics to employ physical kinetic motion to embody and communicate to people. MSOrgm raises its branches when it senses someone who is looking at it. MSOrgm was developed as a robot plant to interact with the viewer in a soothing way; it uses transformable module to build interconnected fabric and produce unexpected behavior. SSOrgan provides a novel tangible interaction, which generates color in response to touch. SSOrgan is an artificial skin system composed by dense individual sensing module; it creates the responsive behavior executed by its external contact and its internal computing mechanism. LBSkeleton explores a mutual interaction that happens between “the piper and the snake” ? through the change of the sound performance that should triggered by body movement reflectivity. LBSkeleton shows a kinetic structural system, which is engaged with the sensor networked framework and the origami tessellation module to perform a kind of growling behavior with sound. These works bring the specific type of modeling, controlling, and interacting on the designing of the kinetic creatures. The artworks are bringing novel user experiences with the biomimetic mechanism in a space.

Visual Tweet

“Visual Tweet: nature inspired visual statements” explores connections between science, computing, and art in a similar way as it is done in the previous chapter, “Looking at sciences through the water.” This chapter examines concepts and processes that relate to some fields in physics, biology, computing, and other sciences, and at the same time pertain to the planet’s life and humanity’s everyday experience. This chapter solves the projects visually, through art and/or graphics. Exploration of science-based concepts and nature-related processes support the understanding of the project themes, triggers imagination, and thus inspires enhancements to the ability to communicate with visual language and create artistic work. Comprehension of what is observed, the power of abstract thought, and an answer to evolving issues will result in personal visual projects – drawings, graphics, illustrations, animations, video clips, or web projects. This chapter comprises two projects about science-related themes: (1) Symmetry and pattern in animal world: geometry and art, and (2) Crystals and crystal caves. Each project invites the reader to create visual presentation of this theme.

Looking at Science through Water

This chapter is focused on creating the visual approach to natural processes, concepts, and events, rather than their description for learning. It has been designed as an active, involving, action-based exercise in visual communication. Interactive reading is a visual tool aimed at communication, activation, and expansion of one’s visual literacy. It addresses the interests of professionals who would like to further their developments in their domains. The reader is encouraged to read this chapter interactively by developing visual responses to the inspiring issues. This experience will be thus generated cooperatively with the readers who will construct interactively many different, meaningful pictorial interpretations. “How to produce texts by reading them,” asks a philosopher, semiotician, and writer Umberto Eco, (1984, 2). The chapter comprises two projects about water-related themes; each project invites the reader to create visual presentation of this theme. Selected themes involve: (1) States of matter exemplified by ice, water, and steam, and (2) Water habitats: lake, river, and swamp.

Nature Related Computerkunst

It has been generally accepted in art history that nature ranks as master and ideal of the arts. Everybody knows examples of nature-related artworks created over centuries and decades in a conventional manner. Most of the contemporary readers witnessed the invention of the computer as a tool used in natural sciences, and later, in the arts as well. As a natural scientist and curator of art exhibitions, the author of this chapter was continually involved in this contemporary development which raised a fundamental question: Would the computer as a tool be a means to generate new representations of nature related art? This would demand results that ought to be different from conventional works of art as to the conceptional creation processes as well as the output. Some theoretical backgrounds and categorizing of such creations are discussed in this chapter and then illustrated by several examples from artists participating in a series of ´Computerkunst/Computer Art’ exhibitions during the quarter of the last centuries (1986-2010). Though it might be too soon to judge computational art works concerning their importance in Art History, a closer investigation in the creational processes and social contexts seems helpful and worthwhile.

Bio-Interfaces

The bio-interfaces are widening the notions of complexity, affectiveness, and naturalness to an organic scale, in which the physiological information of the users acts as data to configure an interaction that responds to their emotional state in order to match the state of their body at that particular moment. In this context, the chapter discusses the role of the bio-interfaces in building a differentiated condition of interaction governed by the biology of the users. For this, the chapter presents applications of bio-interfaces in the areas of design, art, and games, considering their use as wearable devices that provide an organic interaction between man and machine, which could, in turn, lead these systems to a co-evolutionary relationship.

Cooperation of Nature and Physiologically Inspired Mechanisms in Visualisation

A novel approach of integrating two swarm intelligence algorithms is considered, one simulating the behaviour of birds flocking (Particle Swarm Optimisation) and the other one (Stochastic Diffusion Search) mimics the recruitment behaviour of one species of ants – Leptothorax acervorum. This hybrid algorithm is assisted by a biological mechanism inspired by the behaviour of blood flow and cells in blood vessels, where the concept of high and low blood pressure is utilised. The performance of the nature-inspired algorithms and the biologically inspired mechanisms in the hybrid algorithm is reflected through a cooperative attempt to make a drawing on the canvas. The scientific value of the marriage between the two swarm intelligence algorithms is currently being investigated thoroughly on many benchmarks, and the results reported suggest a promising prospect (al-Rifaie, Bishop & Blackwell, 2011). It may also be discussed whether or not the artworks generated by nature and biologically inspired algorithms can possibly be considered as computationally creative.

Drawings from Small Beginnings

Small, densely arranged elements in large numbers are frequently observed phenomena in nature. The author uses an arbitrarily chosen stretch of landscape, a dry riverbed, to formulate artistic intentions and design programmed interpretations of them. From the database of recorded findings the author formulates concepts, which then transform into programs to generate drawings. Many different programs can satisfactorily assist in this task. The conceptual formulation is a crucial step in the procedural chain for attempts in generative art. This chapter experimentally addresses the formulation of a few concepts inspired by nature, aimed at generating line drawings executed on pen-plotters. Unlike in science and engineering, a piece of code does not produce a solution to a problem for concepts in generative art. Generative drawings are produced through a structured process including a sequence of discrete procedural steps, which are: finding and recording; concept and transformation; programming and testing; and drawing and interpretation.

0h!m1gas

Ants represent a natural superorganism, an autopoietic machine, much like the human society. Nevertheless, the ant society stands out due to self-organization. Ants accomplish the generation of bottom-up structures communicating mainly by pheromones, but they also produce modulatory vibrations. This phenomenon represents a fascinating subject of research that needs to be amplified in order to identify the connections between these social organisms and humans; they share the same environment with humans and participate, thus, in the construction and mutation of posthuman ecology. The human-ant relationship plays an important role in the creation of new ecosystems and the transformations of old ones. Man can approach and embrace this relationship by means of artistic experiments that explore the bioacoustics involved in the social behavior of ants supported by the combination of cybernetics, autopoiesis, self-organization, and emergence.

Flow Simulation with Vortex Elements

While fluid flow is a ubiquitous phenomenon on both Earth’s surface and elsewhere in the cosmos, its existence, as a mathematical field quantity without discrete form, color, or shape, defies representation in the visual arts. Both physical biology and computational physics are, at their roots, very large systems of interacting agents. The field of computational fluid dynamics deals with solving the essential formulas of fluid dynamics over large numbers of interacting elements. This chapter presents a novel method for creating fluid-like forms and patterns via interacting elements. Realistic fluid-like motions are presented on a computer using a particle representation of the rotating portions of the flow. The straightforward method works in two or three dimensions and is amenable to instruction and easy application to a variety of visual media. Examples from digital flatwork and video art illustrate the method’s potential to bring space, shape, and form to an otherwise ephemeral medium. Though the rules are simple, the resulting behavior frequently exhibits emergent properties not anticipated by the original formulae. This makes both fluid simulations and related biological computations deep, interesting, and ready for exploration.